Continued education program with Maya Ober and Laura Pregger
Identity Design
Client: Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel
Description
It is often thought that art and design schools embody avantgarde, criticality and boundaryless experimentation. Nevertheless, a closer look at Western art and design education's contents and structures shows that it still follows “universal” ideas, thoughts and norms of modernity, often sustaining and fortifying structural inequalities (such as sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia).
Believing that art and design schools' ultimate duty is, as pointed by design educator Johanna Lewengard“to create conditions for new knowledge to emerge with possibilities to change paradigms”, we created a continuing education program “Educating Otherwise”. Using an intersectional lens, “Educating Otherwise” aimed to question the nature of curricula: what, how, and why we teach. Therefore, we invited various educators from different design schools worldwide, spanning from Argentina and Brazil, to England, Sweden, and Switzerland, with whom we engaged in a process of co-learning and co-sharing “to reflect on how to allow the students to navigate and expand their practices more consciously.”(Lewengard, 2019). How can we emancipate, transform and stimulate critical thinking? Which premises, methods and knowledge are socially relevant to our artistic and design practices?
Between October 2020 – April 2021, we met once a month for an evening lecture and a one-day hands-on workshop during this one-term-long program, facilitating an exchange between different institutes, practices, and teaching experiences. We collectively discussed the meeting points of theory, research, and practice, reflecting upon our teaching practice's curricula, pedagogies, philosophies, approaches, and social relevance.
Concept, curation, realisation:
Mayar El-Bakry, Maya Ober, Laura Pregger
Support:
Prof. Dr Claudia Mareis, Prof. Dr Jörg Wiesel
For the full Program, visit imagining-otherwise.ch
